Photography has transformed how people conceive of the world. Photographs allow people to see all sorts of things that are actually many miles away and/or years preceding. Photography lets people capture moments in time and preserve them for years to come.
Often people at a public place notice that a stranger has taken a photograph of which they would love to have a copy. Alternatively, after going somewhere, a person may bemoan the fact that he did not have a photograph of the event (in the present context, photograph also includes video, audio, or other representation).
A need exists, therefore, to provide a method and apparatus for identifying and connecting people with photographs they want. In addition, there is a need to provide a method and apparatus for characterizing errant photographs stored on computer databases that makes use of a variety of attributes to reliably characterize photographs in such a way as to reduce the amount of manual review necessary to identify and connect people with the photographs they want.